And yet, at the risk of seeming ungrateful for so much caring artistry – and I mean artistry, not just playing – I began to wonder. Is it a mite too calm and collected? Could not the music take just a little more weight of expression? I felt, just slightly, the lack of an awkward Mr. Brendel to pull it around and do things to it, but maybe, also, to find sudden illumination, unexpected depths. Or maybe, even, the lack of stubborn Mr. Richter to find a granitic, uncompromising tension in it. I felt all this particularly in the C minor – couldn’t that final Tarantella sell its soul to the Devil just a little more?

My other slight worry was that the A major was rather different from the others. It has more immediacy, zest, drama. But it also scampers away in places. Some might prefer this. I found it pointed up the advantages of the other performances.

This is one of those cases where “blind listening” might induce a critic to diagnose two pianists at work. I recently commented, somewhat ironically, on a similar case with Monique Haas’s Ravel. As those recordings are about forty years old, a tape could conceivably have got mislabelled over the years. In the present case it’s obviously ridiculous to suppose anything of the kind, with dates and venues clearly stated and a pianist in full career. What it does show is, firstly, the way a different sound picture can alter our perception of a performance or performer. Evidently, Lyndhurst Hall Air Studios produce a more upfront, almost aggressive, sound compared with Abbey Road and Potton Hall – which do not sound particularly different.

It also shows how a young artist can develop in a short time, since the A major was set down first. The inference is that Andsnes himself thought it a bit too impetuous or impulsive and reacted accordingly. What we have, then, is a record of his evolving Schubert, a process which will doubtless continue all his life. I daresay, in ten years’ time he will have found how to recover the drama and immediacy of that earlier A major without losing the more mature structural control of the other performances.

In the meantime, this is nevertheless fully recommendable to those who don’t want every “i” double-dotted and every “t” double-crossed à la Brendel. I hope plenty more Schubert is planned.

-- Christopher Howell, MusicWeb International